We want to go ahead and begin. All right. Well, good afternoon. It's good to see everyone today, and I hope you've had a good week in the Lord this past week. God has certainly brought us through many different difficulties, and so Some of you asked, some of you didn't even know. I'm sure I didn't tell her, but I don't think. We were gone yesterday all day to Austin, me and the girls. And Janice has ditched us. And you're supposed to have a sister there somewhere. She's gone. She's gone. OK. But we went down to Austin yesterday. My uncle passed away about a few weeks ago. This is my, well, you'll never connect it. It's OK. my uncle and was a believer and it's kind of a it's a good day with family and so thanks some of you for your prayers and We returned late last night and Janice will come back tomorrow. Yes I'm ready for that Nine o'clock Nine o'clock in the morning. Yes Southwest so None too soon Well, I don't think that's gonna work so But she'll be back tomorrow. They had a good day yesterday a bunch of ladies went to Katie's shower and Janice said there were like 35 ladies that showed up to the shower And so they spent a long time unpacking things yesterday of gifts and stuff that got bestowed upon her and Jacob and so We're very thankful thankful for that They seem to have found a good a good church that seems to really care about them. And so I Well, let's have a word of prayer as we begin. Items that you have that we can be praying about. That's OK if you don't have anything. That's all right. Well, let's have a word of prayer then. We'll begin. Heavenly Father, we bless your name and we thank you for the privilege we have today of gathering together. Father, we ask that you would help us as we consider again our confession as we study more in depth about the selection of men to serve your church. And we pray, O God, that you would help us to see that this is so pertinent to us, even as a body here, faith community. God, who will in the future, we pray, by your grace, set aside other men for service. And we pray that you would help us to do it in a way that would bring honor to Christ and be for the good of the church. We ask God that you would help us as we consider this topic here. I ask God that you would encourage our hearts today as we gather for worship as well. Be preparing our hearts even now for that. We thank you for your many mercies. God, though we have no immediate needs that we're sharing today, we still are very needy beings and creatures. And so, Father, we come before you, the one who is so kind so full of mercy and Benevolence toward us we ask God that you would shower us with your many blessings in Christ this day Encourage us in the gospel. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen Well, I want to start off today taking us back to the year 1689 not for the reason that you might that you might think that In 1689, at the age of 14, there was a young boy by the name of Benjamin Grosvenor, who was baptized by Benjamin Keech. Benjamin Keech was the pastor of the particular Baptist church in Horsleydown in London. Grosvenor would sit under the preaching of Keech for the next four years at least, and was given during this period an opportunity to preach once at Keech's home. Keech had a few of the members of the church come over to his house, and they all listened to Grosvenor attempt to preach a sermon. Grosvenor was found by those gathered, according to Thomas Crosby, who was a Baptist historian of the next century, to be, quote, a youth of promising abilities. Grosvenor probably would have been about 18, maybe 19 years old at this time. And so with Grosvenor's desires to preach the word of God on the approbation of the Horsley Down Church, Grosvenor was encouraged to pursue education for ministry. Now, being a dissenter at that time, a Baptist, someone who dissented from the Church of England, education for ministry was difficult to obtain. You could not attend Oxford. You could not attend Cambridge. Those were the universities that were associated with the Church of England. But he was encouraged to pursue an education. And having been taught by his parents as a boy, which would have been very common for dissenters in those days, Crosby also notes that Keech, quote, encouraged his going under instructions to be better fitted for the work of the ministry. Some of you, maybe you think you know where we're going here. Maybe you caught something in that very statement right there. We'll come back to that in a moment. Grosvenor subsequently enrolled in the dissenting academy of an independent minister. Now, an independent minister is another dissenting group. the independents, or we sometimes better know them as the Congregationalists. There was a dissenting minister by the name of Timothy Jolly, who in the region of the north central area of England in the suburb of Sheffield, known as Attercliffe. The story of Grosvenor is a sad story. We don't have time to pursue it. Grosvenor did not remain a particular Baptist for long. He actually becomes a Presbyterian, embraces Presbyterian polity for church governance, embraces paedo-baptism, and the whole whole nine yards is known later in the 18th century as one who rejects what we would call subscriptionism, the idea of subscribing to written covenants or written statements of faith. And you may be familiar in the 18th century in 1719 with a controversy known as the Salters Hall controversy, which is a controversy that deals with whether or not we should subscribe to a written statement of faith on the doctrine of the Trinity. Grosvenor, though conservative and though Trinitarian, and remained moderately Calvinistic his whole life, Grosvenor did not believe in the idea of subscribing to written human statements. And so our confession would not be something that he would want to subscribe his name to, all right? So that's a real fun story historically to kind of trace down and very practical and very very important for us even as Baptists today. But the point in mentioning Grosvenor is that he, like many of his day in the dissenting churches, sought a greater fittedness for ministry in training for the church. The words of Crosby that we mentioned a moment ago, Keech sent him to Jolly's Academy to be, quote, better fitted for the work. So it is here that our study of Grosvenor intersects with our study of our confession. So if you have your copy of the confession, I invite you to take it again and turn to chapter 26, paragraph 9. This is where we're going to look a little more closely today. We'll also do this next Lord's Day, Lord willing, and perhaps the Sunday after I come back from the GA. We'll see how far we get next week. So I would direct your attention to our confession in paragraph nine of chapter 26, specifically to note again, the point stressed in the opening words regarding the calling of men who have been fitted and gifted by the Holy Spirit. So with this, we come back to this paragraph to the point that we left off last week, where we had kind of summarized those things in this paragraph that were quote, unquote, new. Remember, we noticed several things in paragraph nine that we're borrowing from paragraphs five or paragraph eight. But in paragraph nine, we found this to be new. We summarized it this way. By way of common suffrage, the church concerned must choose men who are deemed to be fitted and gifted by the Holy Spirit. Let me just read that again. By way of common suffrage, The church concerned must choose men who are deemed to be fitted and gifted by the Holy Spirit. And we noted three things here. The manner of selection, the manner of selecting the men by common suffrage, or we might say by voting. We noted the subject of selection, and that is the church itself. Remember, in Baptist churches, elders, deacons, are not appointed by any kind of governing authority, like in Episcopal churches, where they would appoint the bishops, or any kind of upper-level ecclesial assemblies, like in Presbyterian churches. You don't have synods or presbyteries above a Baptist church. When we go to appoint a deacon or an elder in our church, we're not going to call up the association and say, Who can we appoint? And then, well, we'll dispatch a committee, all right? And then they send a committee, and then they tell us who it's supposed to be. That's not the way it's going to happen, all right? It has to be done by the church itself. We can have the advice or the help of people outside in our association, all right? We could ask other people if we wanted to. I mean, the power to do this rests within the church, all right? But the final selection would come down to the church itself. And thirdly, after the manner of selection, common suffrage, the subjects of selection, the church itself, the objects of selection. And that gets us to the heart of what we're talking about, qualified men. So the need for qualified men to serve in churches was keenly felt by the Baptists of the period. Now, what I'd like to do here is mention a book And then we're going to talk a little bit about some sections from this book. Our brother Jim Renahan, who the longer I study the Confession in the 17th century, I'm just so thankful for all that he has done in so many ways. He has put together in a book called Faith and Life. Perhaps you've seen this book. If you haven't seen this book, I'd recommend the book. It comes in a Kindle format, I think, as well. Some of you high-tech folks like John back there, and so you think I'm kidding every book I ever see John reads on a Kindle or a dabble so What's that? Do what? You're blind I figured it's just because you're techie John and well faith in life for Baptists is the documents of the London Particular Baptist General Assemblies from 1689 to 1694. Some of you are thinking, that will cure my sleeping problems. And I can get that. And I can read this. And I'll just be out. It's not stimulating reading in that sense. So yeah, it might put you to sleep. But it's important reading because for five years, from 1689 to 1694, Our Baptist brothers in London and in the country, as they would call it, met regularly for their assemblies. And they wrote documents, letters to call people to the meetings. They took very detailed minutes while they were at the meetings, things they discussed and voted on, resolutions from the meetings. And they're all contained in here, all right, with also a copy of our confession. which is about the last third or so of the book. So it's a great little book. Um, and it's very helpful for tracing kind of the history of the period and what they meant by and why they were so concerned with men who were fitted and gifted. Now the issue of men being gifted is not, really a subject of a lot of debate, all right? What you have there, gifted and fitted, gifted points to what we might call spiritual endowments, spiritual giftedness, and the Bible talks about spiritual gifts. So you could look in, for example, Ephesians chapter four, or Romans chapter 12, or 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14, where it talks about various gifts, or 1 Peter chapter four, the gifts of serving, the gifts of speaking. And typically, in those sections of the Bible, we could kind of categorize gifts that are given to people in the church under those main headings, gifts of speaking, gifts of serving. And so giftedness, or gifted by the Holy Spirit, is pointing to spiritual endowments. But then there's this idea of being fitted. And we might refer to this more as like natural endowments. Things that, yes, God gives to men, but by way of their design, their makeup, who they are as people. Things that are more naturally acquired. Habits that can be developed. These are of great concern to the period that men ought to be trained. Men ought to be prepared for the ministry. That everything they need for ministry in the Church of Christ is not simply given to them by way of giftedness. It's also something that can be grown or strengthened and built up within them. So I want to look at a couple of sections or a couple texts out of this book to kind of give us an idea of what they were thinking about. First, I want to look at a document, which is a letter that called for the 1689 General Assembly. So when they decided they were going to get together in 1689 and assemble themselves together, There were a group of men that sent a letter out to the churches. There were seven men in particular that signed this letter. Some of the names you may know. William Kiffin. William Kiffin was a Baptist who had been around a long time in Baptist life in the 17th century. Hansard Nollis. Another one you probably know on here is a man by the name of Benjamin Keech. We mentioned him. Kiffin and Nullus are both first-generation Baptists. They're from back in the period of the 1640s when the first London Confession was put together. And so they provide some continuity between that first and second generation of Baptist leaders. I just sent a text out to the guys there today. Hopefully you guys are getting those. We're going to be starting a new study here in about three weeks, the first Tuesday in April. And we're going to be looking through the First London Confession. We talk a lot about the Second London Confession, but not much about the First. And even referring to the Second as the Second ought to prompt you to go, I wonder what the First is all about, all right? What's that one like? And they're very, well, they're similar in doctrinal content, but they're very different in their structure and the way they're put together. And so we're going to do some study on that particular confession. So here's a statement from the letter that was sent to the churches. Quote. That the great neglect of the present ministry is one thing, together with that general unconcernedness there generally, seems to be of giving fit and proper encouragement for the raising up of an able and honorable ministry. Now, the word fit is in there, but the word fit in this statement is not about the minister. They're trying to give fit and proper encouragement to the churches to raise up, quote, an able and honorable ministry. That's the language they're using there, able and honorable ministry. Later, when the assembly met and discussed various questions, they put together a list of several pages of questions and answers. And they're going to send these back to the churches. And on page 41 in the book, if you have the book, I'll just mention the page number. You can look this up later on. And here's the question. The question is, whether the graces and gifts of the Holy Spirit be not sufficient to the making and continuing of an honorable ministry in the churches. Now, here they don't say able and honorable. They just kind of sum it all up as honorable. And so the question revolves around whether or not It is sufficient to have spiritual gifts. Everyone agreed it was necessary that you have spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts were absolutely necessary. And without spiritual gifts, it wouldn't matter how fitted you were. If you didn't have spiritual gifts, which meant you didn't have the spirit, which meant you were not saved, they would all say spiritual gifts are necessary. But then the question comes down, are they sufficient? And this is where there was debate and disagreement amongst some of the Baptists in the period. One man by the name of Thomas Collier, and I left my information on Collier at home, so I'm just going to sum up a few things about him. Thomas Collier was a leading Baptist minister in the west of England in the 1650s. Thomas Collier was known, quote unquote, The Apostle to the West. Did we just talk about this in the membership class? Yeah, look at that. I'll just be quiet. And Katie's going to tell us all about this. I'm sorry, Katie. Yeah, we talked Monday night about the background to our confession. So we got off on this a little bit. And we're going to finish up our membership class tomorrow night, which they're all excited about. No more Monday night having a meet with the pastor. And Matt's quite giddy about the whole thing back there. Do what? So they can watch Monday Night Football again. Season's over, Jeff. You can tell Jeff doesn't watch Monday Night Football, can't you? No. It's rabbit season. It's rabbit season? Like Bugs Bunny? Yeah, exactly. So where was I? Thomas Collier, in the 1650s, was known as the Apostle to the West. It is thought that he probably planted about 100 churches in the Western regions of England during the 1650s. And Thomas Collier was a very strong and devout Calvinistic particular Baptist preacher of that first generation. And he had the confidence of the churches. However, Thomas Collier began to move toward Arminianism. Thomas Collier eventually moved to a full-blown Sassanianism denying the deity of Christ, denying the Trinity, rejecting the gospel. So Thomas Collier, though, had planted all of these churches. What would you imagine the relationship would be like between the church and the church planter? Yeah. It might have been a pretty good, strong relationship. The churches in the East, in particular, began to be very concerned about the churches in the West. Would they follow Collier to abandon the faith? This is one of the things that's behind the movement to get the churches all around England to come together to adopt a confession of faith, all right? To stem the tide of the corruption that will come into the churches. Now the reason I mentioned Thomas Collier is because Thomas Collier believed that to be trained for the ministry apart from spiritual gifts was folly. Thomas Collier rejected training. Isn't that interesting? You know, the man that abandons the faith rejects his training. Kind of what happened in America in the 19th century with Charles Finney. trained a Presbyterian, trained a Westminster confession man, then rejects the Westminster doctrinal standards. And you had, in 19th century revivalism, a real anti-intellectualism amongst some of the revivalists, rejecting the idea of a strong doctrinal point of continuity with the past. Yes, Tom? Yes, yes, this is true and Not to be taken, you know whole whole hog as they would say that all Baptists are like that because that's not the case but There actually is a strong movement in the 17th century and into the 18th century of the idea of preparation for the Baptist. We'll talk more about that movement. We're going to kind of move from 17th to 18th century here a little bit. So in 1689, when they meet, they put together this list of kind of a Q&A list, all right? Some of you guys have been to like a conference, like a founder's conference or something like that. Usually there's like a Q&A panel, and they put all the guys up there on the front. I've been able to sit on a few of those, and I usually just sit there. And I listen to the other guys answer questions, because I'm thinking, why am I even up here? But I get to be there, and that's kind of fun. So the question is, whether the graces and gifts of the Holy Spirit be not sufficient to the making and continuing of an honorable ministry? Are they not sufficient? The answer is, it's in the affirmative. They're not sufficient. They're not saying they're not necessary. but we can help men by preparing them further in the things of the ministry. Now, here's the next question. Whether it be not advantageous for our brethren now in the ministry or that may be in the ministry, so those that are already pastors or those that may be pastors in the future, to attain to a competent knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues, that they may be the better capable to defend the truth against opposers. Answer? Resolved in the affirmative. So that's what they're saying. They're saying, yes, we need to train men in languages which is beyond which is beyond mere giftedness of the Spirit. Because remember, our forefathers at this point, and we would fall in this camp as well, they were fully cessationist. They did not believe in Pentecost being redone over and over. They were not anticipating somebody getting up and preaching a sermon and all of a sudden speaking in Greek, speaking in Hebrew, speaking in Latin. Those were learned languages. So this is what happens from the meeting going out to the churches. So two questions here that I read, 41 and 42, on page 41 and 42. So this brings up the distinction again between fitted and gifted. Gifted, spiritual endowments given to the believer. Fitted, natural endowments given to men. Habits that might be increased and encouraged and strengthened and abilities that men might be trained in. All right, moving forward to 1642. Let me just kind of stop there. Questions? Comments? Whatever. It's funny that you mention that about them learning the languages, original languages, because even in our confession, it says that they're not supposed to be doing that. They're supposed to be preaching in a tongue that the people will know. Yes, preaching in a known tongue. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, very good. So I'm going to jump forward to 1692, so a couple years later. And for those of you, again, that have the book, I'm jumping to page 92, all right? In this particular meeting, let me back up here to where it starts. OK, narrative of the proceedings. And just to mention some names again, it's good to name drop or whatever. These are some guys that are present at this meeting. Andrew Gifford. Andrew Gifford is from Bristol, whose ministry overlaps with Betham's. Not overlaps in time, but overlaps in location, where Gifford is out in the West, and Betham will one day be in the 18th century. Other men, John Willis. This brother is interesting. His life intersects with Bedham's father. John Willis would pastor the same church with John Bedham in just a few years from this point, early 18th century. Then you have some of the other names that are very well-known, William Kiffin again, Benjamin Keech, Hercules Collins. Some of you are familiar with a little book that Richard Barcellos put out a few years ago, The Orthodox Catechism. Some of you heard of that book before. It's a real helpful little catechism. It's very similar, it's like a Baptist version, I think, of the Heidelberg. I believe it's very similar to the Heidelberg. He was present at this meeting. William Collins, where do you know that name from? William Collins pastored a church with Nehemiah Cox known as the Petit France Church. All right. Yeah, and Like that little light came on. Oh, yeah, I remember him. All right. I remember Nehemiah Cox is dead. Nehemiah Cox and William Collins were probably the principal authors of the Confession and Cox is dead by this point. I just kind of mentioned those names. This is what they They they then sign a letter that they send out to the churches, and this is one of the statements. They want to put together a fund for the training of ministers, because money is always a problem. Churches are poor. The state is still sucking money out of them to support Oxford and Cambridge and the government. And then what little they have left, they could possibly give to the churches. For the better keeping up with the fund, that this method may be observed. One, that all churches make quarterly connections, connections, I'm sorry, collections, in what method they think best for the encouragement of the ministry. Though it be never so little by helping those ministers that are poor to educate brethren that may be approved to learn the knowledge of those tongues wherein the scriptures are written. So again, they're trying to raise money to help pay for these young men to be trained in languages. The next year, 1693, just for a reference in the book, this takes us up to around page 121. What I want to read you here, this is Jim giving kind of an introduction to this particular year's narrative in 1693 and 64. And Jim makes this comment here. He says, the most interesting element in the report is a lengthy discussion of spiritual gifts and human learning in the choice of ministerial candidates. So they have a long discussion about this. That's the little preface point there I want to read. Now, let me just see if I can draw a few statements. Oh, here. I'm sorry. One more statement from Jim is this. Where to start? The first Baptist training college in England is the Bristol Baptist College. The messengers could hardly have opposed... Back up. So there's a question when you read the narrative, because some of the language can be difficult to just understand, and there's a question about whether or not they're rejecting extra training, whether or not they're rejecting fitting a man by human learning. Some of those that were present were from Bristol. from the Broadmead Church out in the West. And the Broadmead Church in Bristol is a church that has a long history of desiring to train men for the ministry. There was a man by the name of Edward Terrell. Edward Terrell was an elder in the Broadmead Church. And in 1679, Edward Terrell gave a great sum of money to the church for the purpose of establishing basically an academy. You can imagine, somebody's got to fund this kind of a thing. And I should have brought this picture. I have a picture of my office. It sits behind my desk. Somebody's trying to get in. Sorry. So I have a picture of my desk behind my desk, in my office behind my desk, of the door to the Bristol Baptist Academy when it was remodeled, I think, somewhere in the 19th century. It's been remodeled again since then. And it's now called Bristol Baptist College, now an actual college. And above the door, kind of the archway in the door, someone in the 19th century had made this stone, and they cut 1679 into it, showing not the time that the school actually started meeting, because that would take us to 1720. 1720 is when the school got its first tutor. and its first tutor was Bernard Foskett who taught Benjamin Bedham in 1740 or 1737 or so when Bedham went there. It's a great story of Foskett, but that's another story too. Do what? Yeah, yeah, I got to write on him once and I'd love to take that paper and do some more digging. Anyway, So Foskett's the first tutor so in 1720 that's when it really starts becoming like an academy but in 1679 that's when the guy gave the money. They kind of laid in seed form for a long time until they finally were able to get somebody there to actually run the school all right and when I say run the school I think the first year Foskett was there they had like two two students. So you think of, think of RBS, you know, don't despise the day of small things. And I think a couple of years ago I had, I had Vishal and Price, right, in the class. And this year I think we have four official students, a couple other auditors. So that's not like much. It's still small. But I'm not Dozol. And Dozol just had his philosophical theology class. They had, I think, 15 or so in the class, like meeting in class and several others Zooming in. And so things are growing. Anyway, 1679, Edward Terrell gives the money So this school always has kind of embedded with it a driving desire to see men train. Yeah, Sean. Oh, I was going to say, don't take it personal, because this class is every three years. Your class is like new. I don't take it personal. I'm just thrilled that anybody shows up. And so, you know, they let me walk in the building. It's really humbling. So that's just great. So that desire is there, it's bubbling in the Broadmead Church, and they're represented at this assembly. So when we read statements that make it sound like they're saying, no, you don't need to learn, it would be really counterintuitive for the Broadmead people to be saying that, because they were so committed to education. So Jim makes this comment. He says, the messengers could hardly have opposed formal training while meeting, figuratively speaking, on the doorstep of the young college. Their meeting, the actual assembly that year, is in Bristol. So they're probably there at the broad meeting. And he says, their concern is simply to say that formal education must not be elevated above spiritual gifts when evaluating the qualifications of a ministerial candidate. And the London narrative also mentions the matter. So that year, they actually had a meeting in Bristol. And they had another meeting in London, I think like six months later. So they had two meetings that year. All right. So let me read you some of the things they actually said. This comes out of a section known as the Breviates. And the breviate was a summary document that gave a report to the churches on what they talked about. And again, it comes in the form of questions and answers. So let me think about where to start here. that we may remove all jealousies and give satisfaction to all our brethren that there is no intention or design in this assembly in relation to the education of youth." And he's not talking about, you know, like six-year-olds learning how to read. He's talking about the education. He's talking about men being trained for the ministry. "...to promote human learning." So there's no intention or design in the assembly. to promote human learning or acquired parts, things that they obtained that they didn't have by spiritual giftedness, or to make them equal with the gifts of the Spirit. So they're not saying they're not important or helpful. They're just saying they're not what? They're not more important than. That we abhor such a principle and practice being satisfied and assured that the gift for edification is a distinct thing from acquired parts. and that men may attain the greatest degrees in human learning, and yet notwithstanding, be ignorant of Christ and the gospel." They're affirming that you can get a guy that's really smart, but he doesn't know the gospel. He doesn't have the spirit of Christ. He will be of no edifying benefit to the church. He'll just make them smarter. This is one of the things that was very difficult yesterday. In my uncle's memorial, the man who spoke was a nice man. I spoke to him after. He was a nice man. He actually read the Bible a couple of times. He said a couple of nice things, even somewhat vaguely directed to Jesus or about Jesus. But you would not know the gospel from what was said. You would have known law. You would have known piety. You would have known that my uncle set a good example in the way that he lived. I couldn't help but imagine that my uncle might be screaming from the grave. Tell them how to know Christ. But I don't know that this man knew Christ. And you can't tell someone. if you don't know it yourself. I mean, he could have read the Bible, and the Bible could have itself exhorted people to repent and believe. But if he himself didn't know the whole concept of coming to trust in Christ as Savior and Lord, he would not know to admonish people to do that, because he just didn't know those things. And why? Why did he not know them? Well, I don't know. Maybe he was just being nice, and it was a funeral, a memorial, we just wanted to keep everything, you know. But I'm thinking, you probably have a whole room here. There were probably 200 people in that room. You have a whole house full of people that probably don't know the Lord Jesus Christ. And we talked yesterday more about longhorn football than we ever talked about Christ. And that part grieved me. And I thought my uncle would want me to know about Jesus. And we read, we read verses, we But we just missed that precious little part. And I just thought, you know, I wanted to hear more. I wanted to hear more about how a lost sinner could come to Christ. And I think my uncle would have wanted them to know more about that. And I heard things that I, you know, that were encouraging, were helpful. a blessing about his life and things I didn't know. That was great. I wanted to hear more. I wanted to hear about how a sinner comes to know a Savior. And I missed that part. And I don't want to assess why. I don't know why. But I still missed it. But the Baptists in this period, they They want to declare very clearly that human learning, as profitable as it is, is not beyond. It doesn't make one knowledgeable about Christ. It can't bring one to Christ, and it can't bring one the Spirit, and it can't show one the glories of Christ. A second thing they said here is that God does sometimes bestow greater gifts for the edification of his church on some who have not attained the knowledge of tongues than he doth on some others who have. And here they don't mean tongues as in speaking in tongues. They mean knowledge of Greek and Hebrew and Latin, all right? Acquired gifts, acquired things. that God does sometimes bestow greater gifts for the edification of his church on some who have not attained the knowledge of tongues than he doth on some others who have, and that the churches of Jesus Christ should improve what gifts they have and pray for more." Oh, they go on down. They have several statements that they make here. And then he makes the comment, he said, it is not the gifts of either the learned or the unlearned, but the blessing of God upon the gift of both that makes successful. That no flesh should glory in his presence, but that he that glorieth may glory in the Lord. Now think about that for a moment. You take a man that has great spiritual giftedness. He may spend his whole life long doing what? Preaching with no results. Some anticipate that Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, spent his entire ministry preaching and never won a single convert. I read a couple days ago, Noah preached for 120 years and only took his family onto the ark. Think about that. Noah preaches 120 years while he builds that big boat And in the end, nobody got saved. Nobody. Can you imagine how long a personnel committee would put up with that at a church? Ashley, you've been here for 120 years. Ain't nobody ever joined this church since you came. We've finally reached the end of our rope. You're gone. Places today wouldn't put up with a lot of guys for 12 days, you know? And it's not about giftedness in the end. It's not about learnedness. It's about what God does. Paul says what? I planted. Apollos watered. God caused what? The growth. Paul was the mighty apostle Paul. Apollos was mighty in the scriptures. But God caused the growth. Or God said no growth. Well, that whole section there is a great thing to read. But I simply mention these things because I want you to see the atmosphere in the period of what they were hoping for in ministers. They wanted spiritual giftedness. But they wanted fittedness. They wanted an increase in knowledge and learning. We'll talk more about that in a minute. Yeah, Michelle? What do you got? Oh, that's great. And I think he identifies two or three things in what they are. One of them is what you just said, going into learning, going into the project of learning. And that he identifies with willingness. So in other words, one of the criteria is if he's not willing, he's not fit. to go into the ministry, right? And given an opportunity, if he's not willing to study, then he's not fit either. Yes. So the aspect of ministerial training, when given an opportunity, assesses willingness also, right? To do the hard work. Yeah. And then the other aspect of it is it deals with the issue of flameless conduct, himself, family. And I think one more, and this is the interesting part, because this last bit that he identifies as a part of fittiness is the confirmation of the outward call. So there's an element of fittiness that's only retrospective, which you only think about when it's actually happened. So like the call of the minister, he would say, I think he's a demographer, which is really surprising that he said this. He wants the consent of the local congregation. Yeah, that's good. That is surprising. That's good, though. Yeah. I mean, he also says he wants the consent of the magistrate, too, as he said. So he said it's basically, he wants the consent of the congregation. He wants the consent of the magistrate. He wants the consent of the elders to actually ordain him. And after all of those are complete, the man is said to be fixed. Do you know what sermon that was? You're going to find that and text me, right? Yeah, 31 volume. Volume 10? OK, I'll look it up. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, this was a term being kind of used, floated around in the air there. And so I mentioned Keech. Actually, it is back in here. Keech wrote a little book called The Minister's Maintenance Vindicated. There was some discussion amongst the Baptist churches about whether or not you should pay the preacher. And because if you pay the preacher, well, then he's obviously just there for the money, right? It's the money and prestige, all right? That's what you're looking for. It's the perks. That's what you're looking for. It's the golfing. I'll take you golfing someday to my favorite golf spot. I don't have one. I don't even have a favorite putt-putt place. There's a driving range, like how I'm in the golf, there's a driving range, what, a mile from our house over there? I went once, and I've been here 25 years almost. Golfing's not my thing. But Keech writes this book, The Minister's Maintenance Vindicated, to kind of challenge the churches to say, you've got to pay the preacher. Because if you don't pay the preacher, he's got to eat, he's going to have to work somewhere else, and he's not going to have any time to what? labor in the Word of God for you and pray for your soul. He won't be able to do that. And so, Keech makes this, this is on page 173 in Faith and Life here again. And he says, basically, if we don't pay them and we don't train them, the statement here is, how can we expect in ordinary way to have an able ministry raised up? And what he means by this, an ordinary way, Think of the contrast, an extraordinary way. The extraordinary way of training ministers in learning languages is to what? Take them back to Pentecost and have the Spirit fall on them and give them the gift of tongues to be able to speak unlearned languages. Well, they're known tongues, but they're unlearned to the men. Peter and James and John and the men, when they stood up in Acts chapter 2, they hadn't studied the languages of all these surrounding areas of the Mediterranean world. The Spirit of God just endowed them with the ability to speak in unknown tongues. Well, known languages, but unknown tongues to them. The ordinary way of learning a language is what? Hard work. As I'm reading here about Greek, and Hebrew, and Latin, all I'm doing is being convicted. Because I've studied Greek, and I've studied Hebrew, I've studied Latin, I've studied German. It's hard, and my skill with it to be, and you've got to labor along in those kinds of things to become really acquainted with those languages. And they're very beneficial to know them. And when you get to a spot where you don't know something, you've got to reach for a book to help you. I'm thankful for books that can help, but it's a lot easier if you don't have a book, if you don't need the book, right? You just read it. You just know what it is. So Keech is saying, We want to expect an ordinary way to have an able ministry. And notice the phrase, an able ministry. We've heard the phrase, an able and honorable. We've heard the phrase, just an honorable. Now, Keech is using the phrase, just able ministry. All right? Now, it is that concept of an able ministry that is going to kind of catch the attention of the 18th century scene as things go on. That term, Able is the word that kind of comes to the surface. I want to mention a couple things about the 18th century. One, a book. We're not going to read this book. It's about 600 pages. I don't know. Yeah, 664. Anthony Cross, who I believe may have passed away in the last year or so. Anthony Cross wrote a book. The title of it is, quote, to communicate simply, you must understand profoundly. And that's just a quotation taken from an 18th century brother. The main title is Preparation for Ministry Among British Baptists. And what this book does, for almost 700 pages, is chronicle 18th century mainly into 19th century how we as Baptists have seen fit to train our men for ministry over the years. And it's a fascinating book. He's got another book called Useful Learning, just about as big, and I probably use that book more. But it chronicles how we do this. Here in a couple of weeks, we have a GA. I'm going to be speaking in the evening on this paragraph from the confession. on Thursday night, but in the morning, I'm going to speak about 18th century preparation of ministerial candidates. So how were men trained in the period through the Bristol Academy, primarily? Yeah, sure. In the 17th century, if you weren't born an Anglican and trained an Anglican, and you were Baptist, you'd just go against your mills academy, right? But what could you do in the 18th century? Was there a school in the middle? Well, in the 18th century, the school that kind of rises to the top for a particular Baptist is the Bristol Baptist Academy out of the Broadmead Church under Foskett's tutelage. And Foskett is the principal tutor from like 1720 to around 1750. And then a man by the name of Hugh Evans comes to be the main tutor. And then after Hugh Evans, we get a man by the name of Caleb Evans who comes. They actually start, in 1770, a thing called the Bristol Baptist Education Society. Is this the Baptist Education Society? Oh, the Bristol Education Society. I get that. This particular document I have right here, this is a sermon that is preached by Hugh Evans. That's the father of the father-son, Hugh and Caleb. Hugh and Caleb Evans were Welshmen. So if you think of your map of Bristol, you've got England in your mind. It's like the boot. And Bristol is kind of where the, if this is the boot, the top of it, the heel, the toe, where the boot bends to go down to the toe, Bristol's like right there in the bend, right? And on the other side of Bristol, to the west of Bristol is Wales, bumps right up against England there, okay? So it was very common in this period for particular Baptists from Wales and particular Baptists in the Bristol area to kind of do a lot of intermixing. And the Western Baptists, which were very evangelical and very Calvinistic, drew from Wales a lot of their evangelical heritage. Perhaps you've heard of the Calvinistic Methodists of Wales. Martin Luke Jones has some connections with the Calvinistic Methodists of Wales. William Williams, Roland Evans, different men used greatly in the Great Awakening in the 18th century in the area of Wales. Hugh and Caleb Evans were two men that kind of came out of this very evangelical tradition in Wales, but were Baptists, right? And he preaches a sermon in 1773, and the title to the sermon is The Able Minister. So real quick, let me just show you this, and then we'll stop with this. We'll come back and talk about this next time. Take your Bible and turn to 2 Corinthians 3. No. That's not it. No. Yeah, it is. 2 Corinthians 3, verse 6. I was thinking verse 16. 2 Corinthians 3, 6. Who's got that for us? Who has made us sufficient to be ministers of the New Covenant? Not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Okay, who has made us, what'd you say? Sufficient. Sufficient to be what? To be ministers of the New Covenant. Who has made us sufficient to be ministers of the New American Standard? Who has that? I've got it. Michael? Who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant? OK, that's good. We'll stop there. Who has made us adequate as servants, sufficient as ministers, adequate as servants? Who is our King James holdout for today? Anybody? Somebody got a phone? OK. He carries all these languages in his pocket. The CSB has said, who has made us competent? Ah, OK. The CSB, competent what? Competent to be ministers. Competent to be ministers. OK. Who has another? Before you read the King James, Anthony, who's got another translation? So we got sufficient, adequate, competent. Anybody else have a different translation? Here, let's go with King James. What do we got? King James Version says, who also have made us able ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter of the Spirit, but of the letter of Caleb, but of the Spirit. There you go. That's his text. Able ministers. So that's where he gets that from, the idea of being an able minister. And that certainly fits in with the language of the 18th century that even reaches back, we saw, to Keech. and the ministers of maintenance vindicated wanted to be able ministers. So they're taking this idea. When they say in the 18th century, when they say able ministers, they are saying in that everything at least that was included in the phrase fitted and gifted, if not maybe more. But we're going to talk about that next time because Caleb Evans in his work here has four qualifications. That's interesting. I'll look at Manson this week and we'll see how much overlap there is between the two of these. He has four qualifications for what it means to be an able minister. And I won't give those down because we're too late. So let's pray and we'll come back and talk about that next time. All right, Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and we thank you, Father, for our own history. And we thank you that we can draw from these. And Father, we pray that we can do this for our benefit and our help. We ask God that you would bless our study and that you would prepare our hearts again, even now, as we gather together for worship. And we ask God these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you all very much.